On Incredible Things, Fragment A by Antonius Diogenes the Erotic Writer

On Incredible Things is a lost prose work of paradoxography attributed to Antonius Diogenes, an author best known for his novel The Wonders Beyond Thule. The work is known only from a brief notice in the Library of the 9th-century Byzantine patriarch Photius, who describes it as a compilation of marvelous and unbelievable tales. As a work within the paradoxographical tradition, its content would have consisted of collected accounts of geographical and ethnographic wonders from distant lands, alongside descriptions of unusual natural, astronomical, and biological phenomena, all unified by a focus on narratives that defy ordinary belief. Photius’s reference confirms the author’s activity in this separate genre of sensational compilation, which typifies the imperial-era practice of gathering extraordinary lore from earlier authorities for purposes of erudition and entertainment. This tradition contributed significantly to the encyclopedic currents in later ancient and medieval writing. No fragments of the original text survive.